Freeman and his family lived in and, in 1928, sold to Dr. Goodwin their Historic Area home on east Francis Street.

The Man Who Said No

by Rosanne Thaiss Butler

Mass Meeting, 8:00 p.m., June 12, 1928, Williamsburg High School on Palace
Green. Seventy-year-old retired army Major Samuel D. Freeman, chairman of the town’s school board since 1924, arrived early. The city council had called the meeting to discuss a “proposal to convey the properties of the city to Dr. Wm. A. R. Goodwin and his associates” and “to give a chance for questions for free and frank discussion by citizens.” This evening, Goodwin would reveal to the town the identity of the benefactor who’d spent millions on 140 private properties Goodwin had bought in Williamsburg since 1927.

Sam Freeman was about to give Williamsburg something to think about.

Who was Goodwin, why were city properties up for transfer to him, and what had it to do with Freeman? First, the Reverend Dr. William Archer Rutherfoord Goodwin and the transfers.

Professor of religion and
endowment campaign director
at Williamsburg’s College
of William and Mary
and rector of Bruton Parish
Church, the minister had
long been interested in historic
preservation. He had
during a stint at Bruton
from 1902 to 1908 restored the building to a colonial
appearance, dreaming even then of returning the
town itself to the elegance it had enjoyed as a colonial
Virginia capital.

In 1909, he'd become rector of wealthy St. Paul’s
in Rochester, New York, where he honed his fundraising
skills. He returned to Williamsburg in 1923,
persuaded by William and Mary President J. A. C.
Chandler to work for him raising money to revitalize
the deteriorating college. Goodwin’s plan was to obtain
and preserve historic Williamsburg properties
for the use of the school as housing and classrooms.
He began seeking donors.

In 1924, he approached philanthropist John
D. Rockefeller Jr., who in 1926, the year Goodwin
returned to Bruton’s rectorship, underwrote Goodwin’s
first purchases of Williamsburg property, the George Wythe House and the Ludwell-Paradise
House. Rockefeller asked that his involvement
be kept secret. In May 1927, Rockefeller
gave Goodwin the go-ahead to buy more private
properties. In November, Rockefeller committed to
Williamsburg’s full colonial restoration, earmarking
$5 million for the project that would become
Colonial Williamsburg.

Restoring the town–tearing down the new
and rebuilding the old–meant that Goodwin had
to acquire the city-owned greens and the modern
buildings on them. The greens were where some of
the most significant colonial buildings, including
the Governor’s Palace, had stood. For months Goodwin,
the Rockefeller organization in New York City,
Williamsburg and Virginia
state officials, and architects
and others hired for the project
worked through organizational,
financial, legal, and
technical details. Goodwin
drafted an agreement that
obligated his associates to
build a new courthouse, jail,
firehouse, and other facilities
for the town in exchange for
transfer of the Palace, Courthouse,
and Powder Horn
Greens. The city fathers accepted
it subject to approval
by vote of the citizens. Rockefeller,
heeding Goodwin’s
advice that townspeople
were likelier to consent to transfer of town property
if they knew to whom, decided his identity as donor
should be announced.

Before the mass meeting, Goodwin publicly
circulated his proposed agreement. As meeting
time approached, he was confident of approval.
He had carefully planned the night’s agenda,
and city elections earlier that day had elected as
mayor and to the city council men friendly to the
proposed restoration.

Elizabeth Hayes, Goodwin’s secretary, recounted
the evening’s events in her manuscript
The Background and Beginnings of the
Restoration of Colonial Williamsburg.

Proceedings began with the election of mayor elect
John Pollard as chair. City Council President Channing Hall read the agreement aloud. Goodwin
spoke of his and his associates’ intention “to make
this favored city a shrine . . . dedicated to the lives
of the nation builders,” and answered questions. At
last, to hearty applause, he named Mr. and Mrs.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. as the Restoration’s donors.

What happened next was not part of Goodwin’s
script.

Sam Freeman got to his feet and, in a “clear,
firm voice with oratorical gestures,” spoke his mind:

It is my unpleasant duty to voice the minority
side. There should be something said for both sides. No consideration has been given to the broader aspects of this transfer. If you give up your land, it will no longer
be your city. Will you feel the same pride in it that you now feel as you walk across the Greens, or down the broad streets? Have you all been hypnotized by five million
dollars dangled before your eyes? Can any of you talk back to five million dollars?

If we close the contract, what will happen when the matter passes out of the
hands of Dr. Goodwin and Mr. Rockefeller, in both of whom we have perfect confidence?
Who will be the head? Who will control? I beg you to consider some things which have been overlooked. Dr. Goodwin has spoken very beautifully and very poetically. But is this a philanthropic enterprise? Is it altruistic? There is no doubt but that the contract will go through, but I want you to know that there is one man who has had something to say on the other side. We will reap dollars, but will we own our town? Will you not be in the position of a butterfly pinned to a card in a glass cabinet, or like a mummy unearthed in the tomb of Tutankhamen?

When Freeman finished, “there was perfect silence.”

However stunning Freeman’s remarks had been,
150 voted in favor and four against: Freeman, Dora
and Cara Armistead, and outgoing mayor John Henderson.
The next day, James City County citizens,
included because they shared the courthouse with
the city, voted unanimously for Goodwin’s proposal.
June 14, the city council and the county board jointly
adopted a resolution thanking Rockefeller and Goodwin.
The Restoration moved forward.

Now, Freeman. Born in 1858 in nearby Mathews County, he had lived in
Williamsburg with his family since 1922. He'd seen a bit of the world
before landing in this small town. The red-haired son of Confederate veteran
Joseph Freeman—Sixty-first Virginia Regiment— and his wife, Mary Diggs,
attended the Virginia Agricultural & Mechanical College, now Virginia
Tech, in Blacksburg. He matriculated at the United States Military Academy
at West Point in 1879 and graduated seventh in a class of fifty-two in
1883 with high marks in mathematics, science, and engineering. West Point
Superintendent John Wilson said Freeman was “of high character, a courteous gentleman and an efficient officer.” He stayed in the army for more than thirty
years.

His assignments and efficiency reports indicate
that he was a talented administrator and
instructor. From 1883 to 1887, Lieutenant Freeman
served as an officer of the Tenth Cavalry, the
African American Buffalo Soldiers–so called by
their Indian foes for the soldiers’ ferocity and the
texture of their hair–stationed in Texas and Arizona near the end of the Indian Wars. For the next decade, Freeman taught mathematics, astronomy,
and natural philosophy at West Point. An inventor,
he patented a portable folding bathtub the
cavalry used.

When the Spanish American War came, Freeman
resumed service with the Buffalo Soldiers
and was promoted to captain. He went with them
to Cuba, where he contracted malaria, then to Fort
Robinson in Nebraska, and to the Philippines.
In 1907, he was promoted to major and married
a twenty-nine-year-old teacher, Bertha Meier,
whom he'd met out west.

In August 1909, Freeman
retired, returning
with his wife to Mathews
County. The first of their
three children was born
in late 1909, the last in
1913. During World War
I, Freeman volunteered to
return to duty. First assigned
to teach military
science at West Virginia
University, he later commanded
the Students’
Army Training Corps,
a federal effort to teach
draftees skills needed
for the war, at Alabama
State Normal School and
at The Citadel military
academy in Charleston,
South Carolina.

Promoting the war effort
in Mathews County,
he spoke at its 1917 Patriotic
Rally, addressed
5,000 at its 1918 Fourth
of July celebration, and was commander of Post 83,
American Legion.

Freeman moved his family to Williamsburg because
he thought its schools better than Mathews
County’s. The Williamsburg of the 1920s was a clash
of old and new. H. M. Stryker, mayor in the 1950s
and ’60s, said downtown before the Restoration
was “all strung out, from the college to the site of
the old Capitol. Banks, stores, rooming houses, and
meat markets mixed in with buildings left over from
the eighteenth century.” Elizabeth Hayes found its colonial
buildings and gardens charming, “marred
but not destroyed by the devastating touch of time.”
Goodwin hated its unsightly telegraph poles, falsefront
shops, gasoline stations, and jerrybuilt Palace
Theater.

Freeman bought the Wise House at 432 East
Francis Street for $5,000 from Virginia Peachy
Wise. Freeman sold the home to Goodwin in March
1928, leasing it from the Restoration until moving
out four years later. Freeman was Williamsburg’s
school board chairman for six years and a Bruton
vestryman for five. He was part of the three-man
vestry committee that in 1926 asked Goodwin to resume
Bruton’s rectorship.

For the Governor’s
Palace at the north
end of Palace Green
to be reconstructed, the
property had to be cleared
of the city’s high school
and the college’s Matty
School, a teacher training
facility. For months,
Goodwin had strategized
the site’s transfer to the
Restoration. In March
1928, the college told
Goodwin he had its full
cooperation. Since the
school board controlled
Williamsburg High School
and Freeman was board
chairman, Goodwin had
to deal with him, too.

Days before the mass
meeting, Goodwin approached
Freeman, asking
him to develop with
college president Chandler an understanding on
possible transfer of the schools sites and replacement
of the buildings. Shortly after the meeting,
Freeman said that the school board and the college
would cooperate in operating the schools only so long
as that was in the interest of both.

As for the high school, he said, “It is not to be
expected . . . that the School Board will be moved
to relinquish its rights for anything less than what
it considers due to the city in the present circumstances
and, at the same time, commensurate with the dignity of your
undertaking.”

That did not sit well
with Goodwin. He advised
Freeman to consult an attorney,
and wrote to the
school board as a whole,
reminding them that he
had the backing of the
mass meeting agreement
and other authority. He
asked them by formal vote
to consent to transferring
the high school and site,
and “authorize the proper
person” to relinquish the
board’s rights in those
holdings.

Goodwin said the Restoration
would build either
a school for the city’s
and the college’s shared
use, or a city school to run
without college involvement.
Freeman notified
Goodwin that the board
accepted the first option.
Eventually, the Restoration
decided to pay the school board and the college
$200,000 for their holdings, the board and the college
to handle construction themselves. Another
$200,000 toward the new school came from the General
Education Board, a Rockefeller philanthropy,
and the state of Virginia.

Work began in autumn 1929 on the Matthew
Whaley School, named for a seventeenth-century
boy whose mother created in his memory an endowment
for educating Williamsburg children. Freeman
oversaw city interests throughout the project.

Freeman’s opposition at the mass meeting didn’t
damage his good standing in Williamsburg. He
met his official responsibilities. Rawls Byrd,
city superintendent of schools during Freeman’s
tenure, said Freeman was greatly interested in his
chairman duties and spent much time on them.

The September 19, 1930, Virginia Gazette, the
local newspaper, reported that at Whaley School’s
opening ceremonies that week, college president
Chandler “paid a well-deserved tribute to Major Freeman for his work on
behalf of the city schools
and education in general.”
The school’s auditorium
was dedicated
to Freeman. The bronze
plaque that still hangs
there says that his “faithfulness
and efficiency in
attending to public duties
have contributed in a
large measure to the success
of this school.”

When Freeman resigned
as school board
chair in December 1930,
the city council accepted
his departure “with reluctance,”
and the school
board told him it felt

That your wise counsel,
your willing service,
and your high
ideals have been of
inestimable value to
Williamsburg and
this community.
That such a fine spirit always existed among
members of the Board has been due in great
measure to the character of your leadership.

In 1932, the Gazette remembered him as “the
progressive and efficient chairman of the city school
board.”

Freeman opposed Goodwin’s plans because he
thought the Restoration would alter everything
likeable about Williamsburg. In his sixties, after
a peripatetic life, he’d chosen to live in this quiet
college town, and had a perspective different from
many who had lived in Williamsburg all their lives.
Freeman saw that he and the town had something
to lose.

Freeman moved back to Mathews County in
1931. Their children were grown, the new public
school was completed, and he was eager to return to
his rural retreat, Avoca Farm, named for his wife’s
Iowa hometown. Freeman died in 1948 at eighty-nine
and is buried in Mathews County’s Trinity Cemetery.

What of his mass
meeting question? Did the
people of Williamsburg
lose control of their town?
Sometimes so it seemed.
Goodwin himself worried
about town reaction
to “Northern architects,
Northern builders, Northern
money.”

As the practical effects
of restoration began
to be felt, problems arose.
Williamsburg attorney
and city official Vernon
Geddy, who had assisted
Goodwin with his purchases
of town properties
and would have key positions
in the Restoration,
outlined a troubling situation
in a September 1929
letter to Charles Heydt,
manager in the New York
office of Rockefeller’s real
estate holdings.

Geddy said townspeople
had great confidence
in Goodwin. But they began to have doubts about
the project when outsider Robert Trimble arrived in
1928 as construction superintendent. Trimble didn’t
understand the townspeople, and they in turn saw
Trimble’s authority as conflicting with Goodwin’s,
who they’d thought was in charge in Williamsburg.

Matters worsened when the Restoration took insurance
business away from local agents and placed
it with another newcomer, Robert Lecky Jr., a Richmond
fire insurance agent brought to Williamsburg
on a one-year contract in 1929 by the New York
office to manage its local real estate interests. That
cost local people their livelihoods, alienating them,
their families, and friends. Geddy said townspeople
resented Lecky’s appointment. He “came to this city
unliked and suspected,” and his lack of cooperation
with Goodwin caused friction.

The Restoration looked to some in town like
an unorganized collection of disparate groups “who
function in quite evident unharmonious discord.”
Residents saw little hope for the Restoration’s success,
Geddy said, unless
the situation changed.

Improvement came
in November 1929 when
Rockefeller named Kenneth
Chorley the Restoration’s
vice president,
opening a Williamsburg
office in December. Described
by Restoration architect
William Perry as
“energetic, keen . . . and
realistic,” Chorley had
worked for Rockefeller
since 1923 and been involved
with the Restoration
early on. Goodwin
himself welcomed Chorley’s
appointment, telling
Rockefeller in early 1930,
“An atmosphere has been
created of confidence and
good-will.”

Public dissatisfaction
flared again in January
1932, when something
happened that likely
would not have, absent
the Restoration. Restoration
workmen abruptly removed from the foot of
Palace Green the town’s Confederate monument,
erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy
and the citizens of Williamsburg and James
City County. It was trucked to the city cemetery on
the outskirts of town.

The Restoration hadn’t initiated this move. The
town’s UDC chapter did that, with city council approval.
The iconic Civil War memorial had become
anachronistic, blocking the clear, colonial-era view
across Palace Green. Angry citizens asked why the
public hadn't been consulted. Some blamed the Restoration.
“Indignation . . . began crystallizing” January
21 at Palace Green, said Newport News’s Daily
Press the next day, “when a cross draped in mourning
was erected on the spot and a sign beneath it
bore, in letters of flaming red, the words ‘Crucified
on a Cross of Treachery.’”

Reacting to the outcry, the UDC proposed
raising the monument on the grounds of the courthouse
the Restoration had just built in town; city and county governments
agreed. When public opposition
persisted, the
UDC petitioned the circuit
court for help. Judge
Donald Halsey found in
April that since the city
and county had agreed
to the UDC’s moving the
monument, all possible
owners had assented. The
monument was moved to
the new courthouse, to be
relocated twice more before coming to rest in 2000
in a city park behind Colonial Williamsburg’s DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum.

Restoration at its worst meant ongoing
upheaval, obliteration of the familiar, and
outsiders’ deciding where residents’ houses,
shops, schools, and churches should be. On the other
hand, the city retained ownership of streets, and
Rockefeller’s organization mitigated the disruption
restoration caused.

Though the Restoration demolished the high
school, built in 1921 for about $90,000, it made possible
the $400,000 Whaley School that Rawls Byrd
called “the finest school building Williamsburg had
ever had.”

It removed businesses from where they had
been, but created a state-of-the-art business block,
today’s Merchants Square, to accommodate them.

Initial restoration activity concentrated on the
Capitol, the Palace, and Duke of Gloucester Street.
Owners of houses like Freeman’s, which had low
priority because distant from the restoration locus,
could sell their homes–Freeman cleared $15,000
from the Restoration on his–and stay as renters
until the property might be restored.

For the colonial houses targeted as restoration
priorities, Goodwin devised life tenure as a sales
incentive for owners, most of whom were elderly
and had lived in their homes for years. Life tenure
allowed them to remain in their restored houses
for life, paying a tiny rent and accepting certain
terms. For those whose homes had to be demolished
or moved, the Restoration built new or relocated
existing ones. Hayes said many who gave up their
houses came to Goodwin’s office expressing appreciation
for the Restoration, the inconvenience of moving
balanced by pride in
being part of a “patriotic
endeavor to which they
were closely related.”

Chorley became Restoration
president in
1935 and remained so
for twenty-three years,
bringing stability and
growth to its programs.
Townspeople took jobs
with the Restoration, becoming
part of it.

Rockefeller, a regular visitor to Williamsburg
since 1926, bought Bassett Hall on Francis Street in
1936, living there seasonally each year. His affection
for the town and his neighborly presence fostered
townspeople’s acceptance of the Restoration.

What had been the unsettling new gradually
became the comfortable norm. The town adjusted to
change; it wasn’t subsumed. It moved and flourished
beyond the confines of its old footprint, Colonial Williamsburg’s
Historic Area.

Williamsburg, Virginia: A City before the State,
published by the City of Williamsburg to celebrate
its 300th birthday in 1999, said: “The area’s
long history is one of development and change.
Williamsburg in 1975 was vastly different from
Williamsburg in 1925, just as 2025 will be greatly
different from 1975.”

The man who said no, Sam Freeman, is long
departed. But history remembers his life and his
stewardship in a city that turned back time.

Rosanne Thaiss Butleris Colonial Williamsburg’s
director of archives. This is her first contribution to
the journal.

Suggestions for further reading:

Rawls Byrd, History of the Public Schools in Williamsburg (Williamsburg, VA, 1968).